Book reviews

Sustainable Industrialisation. David Wallace, 1996, London, Royal Institute of International Affairs, (Earthscan), 120 pp. ISBN 1 85383 352 5, £11.95 (pbk)

Managing Green Technologies for Global Competitiveness. Christian Ndubisi Madu, 1996, London, Quorum Books, distributed by Eurospan, ISBN 0 89930 827 9, £47.95 (hbk)

Greening People, Human Resources and Environmental Management. Walter Wehrmeyer (Ed.) 1996, Sheffield, Greenleaf Publishing, 416 pp. ISBN 1 874719 15 2, £29.50 (hbk)

The Environment for Children: understanding and acting on the environmental hazards that threaten children and their parents. David Satterthwaite, Roger Hart, Caren Levy, Diana Mitlin, David Ross, Jac Smit & Carolyn Stephens, 1996, London, Earthscan Publications, 284 pp. ISBN 1 85383 326 6, £13.95

Local Sustainability: managing and planning ecologically sound places. Paul Selman, 1996, London, Paul Chapman, x + 175pp, index. ISBN 1 85396 300 3, £14.95     

Formulation of resource depletion index

A resource depletion index can serve as a quantitative tool to evaluate the level of depletion for natural resources. This study introduces two types of resource depletion indices, the global resource depletion index and the local resource depletion index. Global resource depletion index mainly concerns global reserves and the annual consumption rate of these resources. The local resource depletion index not only considers global reserves and their annual consumption rate, but also considers the local factors such as local reserves, local recycling rates, and local resource import characteristics. This study considers the local resource characteristics of Taiwan and develops calculations for local resource depletion indexes for the resources of cobalt, molybdenum, tungsten, copper, aluminum, lead and zinc.     

LAKE ONTARIO REGULATION UNDER TRANSPOSED CLIMATES1

ABSTRACT: The implications of Lake Ontario regulation under transposed climates with changed means and variability are presented for seasonal and annual time scales. The current regulation plan is evaluated with climates other than the climate for which it was developed and tested. This provides insight into potential conflicts and management issues, development of regulation criteria for extreme conditions, and potential modification of the regulation plan. Transposed climates from the southeastern and south central continental United States are applied to thermodynamic models of the Great Lakes and hydrologic models of their watersheds; these climates provide four alternative scenarios of water supplies to Lake Ontario. The scenarios are analyzed with reference to the present Great Lakes climate. The responses of the Lake Ontario regulation plan to the transposed climate scenarios illustrate several key issues: (1) historical water supplies should no longer be the sole basis for testing and developing lake regulation plans; (2) during extreme supply conditions, none of the regulation criteria can be met simultaneously, priority of interests may change, and new interests may need to be considered, potentially requiring substantial revision to the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909; (3) revised regulation criteria should be based on ecosystem health and socio-economic benefits for a wider spectrum of interests and not on frequencies and ranges of levels and flows of the historical climate; and (4) operational management of the lake should be improved under the present climate, and under any future climate with more variability, through the use of improved water supply forecasts and monitoring of current hydrologic conditions.     

A rationale for coastal wetland restoration through spoil bank management in Louisiana,USA

The rationale and outline of an implementation plan for restoring coastal wetlands in Louisiana is presented. The rationale for the plan is based on reversing the consequences of documented cause-and-effect relationships between wetland loss and hydrologic change. The main feature is to modify the extensive interlocking network of dredged spoil deposits, or spoil banks, by reestablishing a more natural water flow at moderate flow velocity (<5 cm/sec). Guidelines for site selection from thousands of potential sites are proposed. Examples of suitable sites are given for intermediate marshes. These sites exhibit rapid deterioration following partial or complete hydrologic impoundment, implying a strong hydrologic, rather than sedimentological, cause of wetland deterioration. We used an exploratory hydrologic model to guide determination of the amount of spoil bank to be removed. The results from an economic model indicated a very effective cost-benefit ratio. Both models and practical experience with other types of restoration plans, in Louisiana and elsewhere, exhibit an economy of scale, wherein larger projects are more cost effective than smaller projects. However, in contrast to these other projects, spoil bank management may be 100 to 1000 times more cost effective and useful in wetland tracts <1000 ha in size. Modest spoil bank management at numerous small wetland sites appears to offer substantial positive attributes compared to alternative and more intensive management at a few larger wetland sites.     

Protection policy for Hawaii's native wildlife during geothermal energy development

Hawaii possesses abundant geothermal resources and rare native wildlife. Geothermal energy development has not posed a threat to native wildlife in the past, but development potential has recently reached a level at which concern for native wildlife is warranted.Potential geothermal resource areas in Hawaii intersect important native forest and endangered species habitat. The ability of existing laws to constrain development in these areas is in question. State and federal endangered species and environmental reporting laws have little ability to constrain geothermal development on private land. Hawaii's Land Use Law had been viewed by conservationists as protecting natural areas important to native wildlife, but recent decisions of the state Land Board sharply challenge this view.While this dispute was being resolved in the courts, the state legislature passed the Geothermal Subzone Act of 1983. Wildlife value was assessed in the geothermal subzone designation process mandated by this act, but the subzones designated primarily reflected inappropriate developer influence. All areas in which there was developer interest received subzone designation, and no area in which there was no developer interest was subzoned. This overriding emphasis on developer interest violated the intent of the sub-zone act, and trivialized the importance of other assessment criteria, among them native wildlife values.     

VALUATION OF IMPROVED IRRIGATION EFFICIENCY FROM AN EXHAUSTIBLE GROUNDWATER SOURCE1

This paper presents estimates made via a recursive linear programming model of the net benefits of improving irrigation application efficiency from an exhaustible groundwater source. Net benefits were derived for different application efficiency levels under furrow, sprinkler, and LEPA irrigation systems. In addition, net benefit estimates were obtained for the transition across irrigation systems. Solutions from the model indicate that low crop prices have a differential impact on net benefits across irrigation application efficiencies and irrigation systems. Also, the more limited groundwater situations consistently reduce the economic incentive to adopt improved irrigation application techniques across all irrigation systems.     

Application of a compact all solid-state laser system to the in situ detection of atmospheric OH,HO2, NO and IO by laser-induced fluorescence

A tuneable, high pulse-repetition-frequency, solid state Nd:YAG pumped titanium sapphire laser capable of generating radiation for the detection of OH, HO2, NO and IO radicals in the atmosphere by laser induced fluorescence (LIF) has been developed. The integration of the laser system operating at 308 nm into a field measurement apparatus for the simultaneous detection of hydroxyl and hydroperoxy radicals is described, with detection limits of 3.1 x 10(5) molecule cm(-3) (0.012 pptv in the boundary layer) and 2.6 x 10(6) molecule cm(-3) (0.09 pptv) achieved for OH and HO2 respectively (30 s signal integration, 30 s background integration, signal-to-noise ratio = 1). The system has been field tested and offers several advantages over copper vapour laser pumped dye laser systems for the detection of atmospheric OH and HO2 radicals by LIF, with benefits of greater tuning range and ease of use coupled with reduced power consumption, instrument footprint and warm-up time. NO has been detected in the atmosphere at approximately 1 ppbv by single photon LIF using the Alpha 2Sigma+ <-- Chi 2Pi1/2 (0,0) transition at 226 nm, with absolute concentrations in good agreement with simultaneous measurements made using a chemiluminescence analyser. With some improvements in performance, particularly with regard to laser power, the theoretical detection limit for NO is projected to be approximately 2 x 10(6) molecule cm(-3) (0.08 pptv). Whilst operating at 445 nm, the laser system has been used to readily detect the IO radical in the laboratory, and although it is difficult to project the sensitivity in the field, an estimate of the detection limit is < 1 x 10(5) molecule cm(-3) (< 0.004 pptv), well below previously measured atmospheric concentrations of IO.